1. Field
This invention pertains to business methods and apparatuses related to electronic messages or peer-to-peer communications (SMS messaging, Instant Messaging, email, message components of File Sharing applications (Napster, Kaaza, Morpheus, Knutella etc). In particular it pertains to a computer device intercepting sent electronic messages, scanning the message body content for key words, sending the key words to a remote central computer server which analyses the key words and enhances the message by attaching a relevant, contextual advertising tag line or image/banner/words/HTML/Flash, etc to the electronic message, and transmitting the enhanced message to the receiver.
2. State of the Art
A number of global network advertising systems are known which are used to sell advertising attached to global network messaging applications. In the early 1990's Hotmail (hotmail.com) pioneered the concept of intercepting personal electronic communications and appending third-party content in-side the message of the sender and intended for the recipient to see. Many other messaging systems also followed suit and began appending additional third-party content to personal electronic communications subscribing users. The appended third party content currently is and has usually been very general in nature or somewhat targeted based on dated advertising survey data of user preferences that may have been obtained during sign-up for the service. For example, the following companies attempt to append and/or combine third-party advertising content into electronic messages such as Hotmail, MSN (Microsoft Network), Yahoo!, Mailround, Junglemate, and more specifically Lycos Mail as part of the Terra Lycos Network. Terra Lycos is a global Internet company and leading provider of Internet access & content and provider of various Internet communication technologies. Terra Lycos has developed an electronic communications marketing system that appends various third-party advertisements, sweepstakes etc. in emails that are transmitted by subscribers. In particular Lycos Mail is used to enhance personal email messages by appending hyperlinks, (URL's), text advertisements and general HTML type content along side a sender's original message. This process gives the advertiser a trusted introduction and personal recommendation from the sender to the recipient and is intended to entice the recipient to view and/or click the third-party content.
Other products that are similar and common in the industry are policy and “disclaimer” company content that can be appended and/or prepended to all outgoing corporate email. One company in particular Red Earth Software provides such a product, as does Direct Communications Software Limited based in the United Kingdom. Their product eXclaimer allows companies to: “Add legal disclaimers, boilerplates and signatures to your emails. With this feature you can attach text and images to any incoming or outgoing email, above, below or even to the sides of the original email body. eXclaimer can be used simply to add standard legal disclaimer text to the footer of every outgoing mail, or it can be used to make professional-looking emails that conform to a particular style, with company logos and colors. eXclaimer includes the ability to use a number of variable fields from the Active Directory. These fields behave in much the same way as mail merge fields in a word processor. When used with these fields, the text that eXclaimer attaches can be highly personalized automatically. By integrating with the Active Directory, this feature can be customized for every individual or for whole groups or departments.” (www.exclaimer2000.com).
Reiner, U.S. Patent No. 20020029250 issued Mar. 7, 2002 entitled “Method and apparatus for transmitting an electronic message on electronic letterhead” creates and distributes computer-enhanced artwork for use in electronic messaging. Reiner is primarily “a process for transforming artwork, for example a logo, into a computer-readable artwork which can be computer-enhanced, optimized and distributed to a client computer.”
Tuvey et al, GB Patent No. 2369218 published Feb. 14, 2002 discloses a method of appending compatible graphic or text-based content into electronic messages after intercepting the message and analyzing the messaging system format. The methods employed specifically by Tuvey et al. are not message content specific but are rather general advertisements (with a focus on large intrusive banner ads) that are generated based on user preferences in very high-level general categories such as “books”, “Internet” or “shopping”. The current sign-up process of Tuvey et al. requires the subscriber to “Select a minimum of 6 interests” stating that “It helps us to make sure you only see the stamps you're really interested in!” This process clearly limits the Tuvey et al system to a minimum of six general interest categories and more importantly Tuvey et al. makes no attempt to determine the focus of the actual message content or to derive keyword essence to deliver highly targeted, highly relevant, contextual third-party advertisements. The result is that, the Tuvey et al system will not place third-party content (i.e. ads) that are message content specific and cannot deliver “on-the-fly” contextual content exactly when the advertiser and/or recipient needs it.
Tuvey et al. specifically states in patent No. GB2369218, “Adding information to an electronic communication or e-mail”: “[0040] (a) Embed advertising material into emails; or to [0041] (b) Add reference information to emails—for example an organisation's mail server may be controlled to add information to incoming mails about the sender of the received email where this information was available from a resource to which the organisation has access, or alternatively information about a sender's particular area of expertise or information specifically targeted at the recipient or the organisation they work for may be added to an organisation's outgoing emails.” (original spelling included).
Both of these patented methods and processes fail to deliver contextual, relevant, message specific, message related content exactly when the advertiser needs it to be seen and more importantly exactly when the recipient of the message needs to see the advertisement or other relevant third-party content as it relates to the topic of discussion (i.e. message body content) between the sender and receiving parties. The general enhancement claims made by the applicants are artwork, logos or general graphical banner ads that are wholly unrelated to any specific message content. Accordingly, there remains a need to provide a more efficient means for delivering relevant, contextual third-party content via personal electronic messages utilizing “Just-in-Time-Delivery” to put the content in front of the user when it's needed and when it's relevant to the immediate situation of the sender and receiver.
The current methods in use in the industry render the advertising unfocussed which results in lesser revenues from the sales of lower cost random advertising rates. There thus remains a need for a method adapting advertising directed to particular users of a global marketing network.
In summary, the methods described in the above patent applications and methods do not analyze the message content to append relevant advertising messages. Instead, they append intrusive, blatant, predetermined dated third party advertising to the message. Nor do these methods provide a means to alter, modify, enhance or change the actual content or words of the message body text (as written by the sender) in any way. These applications therefore fail to harness the true potential of personal electronic messaging as a means for a contextually intelligent delivery of third-party content. The current methods fail to tap into what is the essence of the communication, extract that essence, and relate to it. There thus remains a need to employ a process whereby one can deliver third-party advertising content based on an electronic messaging user's current interests as reflected in the message context itself to make the appended advertisements significantly more relevant to the current topic of conversation between the individuals doing the message exchanging. The method and apparatus described below provides such an invention.